BEL MOONEY: The snooty ‘sensitivity readers’ who censored Roald Dahl are robbing children

The fairy tales I read as a child were a world of terror. Those Hans Christian Andersen and Brothers Grimm collections still sit on my shelves, along with volumes of European and world folktales and Greek myths. They all fed my imagination, captivating me with lessons about the darkness that is at the heart of existence.

No children’s story Roald Dahl has ever invented could match those beloved tales of cruel old witches, rapacious kings, sex-mad princes, evil dwarfs, trolls, and (of course) beautiful virgin victims, who would inevitably be abandoned by adults, abused by wicked stepmothers. , imprisoned, taken on horseback, kissed (without giving their consent, of course), threatened with cannibalism, forced to marry men they did not know, etc. How exciting!

But Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, Fantastic Mr Fox, The Witches, and other classic Roald Dahl titles are now widely believed to be unsuitable for children, unless they are sanitized.

Her characteristic wit has been toned down, her language changed to accommodate modern sensibilities about gender, race, weight, violence, and mental health. The Cloud-Men in James And The Giant Peach are now Cloud-People. Tractors in Fantastic Mr Fox can’t be ‘black’ for fear it’s racist, and a character can’t ‘go white’, they have to ‘go pretty pale’.

In 1983, Dahl wrote a story about a boy who grew up with a group of bald witches. Gloriously disgusting, The Witches included this passage: ‘Don’t be silly,’ said my grandmother. “You can’t go around pulling the hair of every lady you meet, even if she’s wearing gloves. Just try it and see what happens.”

But Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, Fantastic Mr Fox, The Witches, and other classic Roald Dahl titles are now widely believed to be unsuitable for children, unless they are sanitized.

The latest edition, published last year, says this: ‘Don’t be silly,’ said my grandmother. “In addition, there are many other reasons why women may wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.”

Can you believe it? The pathetic manipulation of the dangerous Dahl goes on and on: ‘You must be crazy, woman!’ becomes ‘You must be crazy!’ Mrs. Twit is no longer ‘ugly’, and the Oompa Loompas are gender neutral. Then ‘old hag’ becomes ‘old crow’, which is, of course, a serious offense to those of us who are quite fond of those wild, black birds (oops!).

No character is allowed to be ‘fat’, because that might annoy young people who eat hamburgers. Augustus Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is now ‘huge’ instead of ‘fat’.

‘Fat little brown mouse’ is changed to ‘little brown mouse’ (The Witches). The words ‘Here is your little boy,’ she said. ‘He needs to go on a diet’ has been reduced to ‘Here’s your little one.’

One of the changes in The Witches is particularly excruciating. The sentence, ‘Even if she works as a cashier in a supermarket or writes letters for a businessman’ has been changed to ‘Even if she works as a top scientist or runs a business.’

That reveals a truth at the heart of the censorious psyche. All those pompous posting idiots have degrees from what passes as the modern university and just can’t bear to think about “ordinary” lives and everyday jobs.

Oh my dear, imagine being the lesser woman scanning your sauvignon, salami and satsumas at Waitrose. . .

Once upon a time, I was a successful children’s book author, my books (especially the popular Kitty series) landed me in the top earning category of royalties accrued through library loans. I used to visit libraries, schools and children’s festivals all over Britain to talk about my work and answer questions.

Tractors in Fantastic Mr Fox can’t be ‘black’ for fear it’s racist, and a character can’t ‘turn white’, they have to ‘turn pretty pale’

So I found out firsthand just how quirky, entertaining, questioning, goofy, sweet, and admirably robust kids can be. They wanted to talk about everything from the cheeky ‘How much do you make, miss?’ to the tragic: ‘It’s not fair that my favorite uncle died, and he was young too.’ Nothing was beyond them.

So you felt that you could write almost anything for children, relying on your own knowledge and experience. My books were problematic, but they were also fun. In essence, I was always on the side of the mischievous and understood the fears behind bad behavior. No one ever told me what to write.

So it makes me hot to see how today’s young readers are being patronized and ripped off by adults who should know better. I pity modern authors who are fighting the rising tide of puritanism and protectionism that has swept through the publishing industry. No one is safe. Not even David Walliams, who has been criticized for the earthy portrayals of characters in his novels.

It might be tempting to simply scoff at the ‘sensitive readers’ employed by the once great publisher, Puffin Books, and other big ones as well. Those unfortunate souls are doomed to be holed up like poor Rapunzel in her tower, forced to sift through books for “troublesome” words and phrases that might cause “offense”, crying in horror as they rewrite them.

They must have nightmares about wicked witches, inappropriate princes and black cats. The fairy tales I read as a child would make any ‘sensitive reader’ swoon with shock.

We could laugh at the absurdity. Or helplessly sigh that this is just another example of ‘woke’ censorship. But this is deadly serious, and all the righteous outrage caused by this betrayal of Dahl’s spirit has impotence as its background. What the hell can we do?

Children’s imaginations have fear imprinted on them at birth: the witches and goblins of popular memory and the nameless dread of the dark. As they grow, more specific shapes emerge from the darkness: strangers, thieves, the monster you know lives under the bed.

Books like Dahl’s, in their unsanitized form, satisfy these imaginations. They help prepare young people for the fear caused by the images that crowd an imperfect world: gunshots, bombs, violence, the shattered pain on the faces of survivors after a tsunami, a famine, an earthquake.

How can it be right to censor Roald Dahl in an age when parents hand smartphones to young children and soon they can access hardcore porn with a couple of clicks?

It seems that teachers, librarians, and (some) parents, who have slurped awake Kool-Aid so greedily they’ve lost their minds, are only too happy that young children are offered books that feed them trans propaganda. They don’t mind older kids being subjected to terribly explicit sex education, which suggests that sadomasochism can be a fun part of sex.

None of this is remotely funny, and no one should shy away from what’s happening to our culture. Puffin’s cavalier censorship of Dahl’s scathing and deliberately shocking prose is just another example of an insidious takeover of our heritage. Make no mistake, there really is a serious culture war going on.

That’s not a fantasy concocted by journalists and conservative politicians to attack liberal values, or any term the censors might use to justify their startling arrogance. It’s not made up by writers like Salman Rushdie, who tweeted: “Roald Dahl was no angel, but this is censorship nonsense.” Puffin Books and the Dahl estate should be ashamed. Or children’s authors like the brilliant Anthony Horowitz, who has fought his own battles with sensitive readers and warns that moral surveillance of literature is “extremely dangerous.”

This latest example of the hideous hold that “political correctness” (or political correctness, as it used to be called) now has over our society should take us beyond smiles and weary sighs. The problem affects us all. Most important of all, it denies children the right to be shocked, frightened, laugh at the ‘wrong’ things, and make their own decisions about the world.

For them we have to shout: ‘Enough!’ What gives these censors, who also consider Shakespeare and many other writers greater than Roald Dahl ‘troublesome’, any right to alter our cultural heritage?

The severe reaction is overdue. How about refusing to buy any book published by Puffin? After that, I’ll meet you at the barricades to launch their paltry, rewritten efforts at the enemy, waking them up for revenge.